Experts warn Spain is losing the 2nd round in virus fight

August 13, 2020

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Not two months after battling back the coronavirus, Spain’s hospitals are beginning to see patients struggling to breathe returning to their wards. The deployment of a military emergency brigade to set up a field hospital in Zaragoza this week is a grim reminder that Spain is far from claiming victory over the coronavirus that devastated the European country in March and April.

Authorities said the field hospital is a precaution, but no one has forgotten scenes of hospitals filled to capacity and the daily death toll reaching over 900 fatalities a few months ago. While an enhanced testing effort is revealing that a majority of the infected are asymptomatic and younger, making them less likely to need medical treatment, concern is increasing as hospitals begin to see more patients.

Experts are searching for reasons why Spain is struggling more than its neighbors after western Europe had won a degree of control over the pandemic. But one thing is clear: The size of the second wave has depended on the response to the first one.

“The data don't lie,” Rafael Bengoa, the former health chief of Spain’s Basque Country region and international consultant on public health, told The Associated Press. “The numbers are saying that where we had good local epidemiological tracking, like (in the rural northwest), things have gone well,” Bengoa said. “But in other parts of the country where obviously we did not have the sufficient local capacity to deal with outbreaks, we have community transmission again, and once you community transmission, things get out of hand.”

Bengoa is one of 20 Spanish epidemiologists and public health experts who recently called for an independent investigation in a letter published in the medical journal The Lancet to identify the weaknesses that have made Spain among the worst affected countries by the pandemic in Europe despite its robust universal health care system.

Spaniards largely comply with mandatory face mask rules. The health ministry also embarked on one of the world’s largest epidemiological surveys. Randomly testing over 60,000 people, it found the virus prevalence to be 5%, showing that the population was far from a “herd immunity.”

However, Spain, with a population of 47 million, leads Europe with 44,400 new cases confirmed over the past 14 days, compared with just 4,700 new cases registered by Italy, with 60 million inhabitants, which was the first European country to be rocked by the virus.

Spain is still in good shape compared with many countries in the Americas, where the spread seems unchecked in the United States, Mexico and several South American countries. But hospitalizations with COVID-19 have quintupled in Spain since early July, when cases were down to a trickle after a severe lockdown stopped a first wave of the virus that had pushed the health care system to breaking point.

On Tuesday, Spain’s ministry reported 805 people nationwide hospitalized over the past seven days. Half of the 64 people who died over the previous week were from Aragón, the region surrounding Zaragoza.

“There is no one single factor in such a pandemic,” said Manuel Franco, a professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins and Spain’s University of Alcalá, who also signed The Lancet letter. Franco cited Spain’s economic inequalities that have exposed poorer communities, especially fruit pickers, to greater harm, understaffed epidemiological surveillance services, and its large tourism industry. Combined with other factors, they could have formed a lethal cocktail.

Bengoa believes that social customs prevalent in Mediterranean cultures, which emphasize physical contact and smaller personal space, have worked against Spain. “Family gatherings are dangerous in Spain. We are being anti-Spanish in social gatherings if Spaniards don’t kiss, hug and touch one another," Bengoa said, while adding that Spanish and Italian families live in larger, more multi-generational groups than in northern European countries, making contagion inside households more likely.

Some authorities seem to agree. Spain’s Canary Islands government has issued a public awareness spot that shows a family gathering for grandfather’s birthday, with people taking off masks and embracing, only to end with grandfather in a hospital bed.

Italy, the first European country ravaged by the virus, has extended its state of emergency through Oct. 15, and the government has used that authority to pass a series of decrees, ordinances and measures to protect public health.

Spain's government, in contrast, ceded to pressure from some regions to end its three-month state of emergency in June. Spain’s regions since have complained that the government has not given them the special authority to confine people to their homes that it used to good effect under the state of emergency. That has led to regions having to recommend that people stay at home — instead of ordering them to do so — and lower compliance.

Yet it seems that adjusting to the “new normal” of co-existing with the virus has been uneven across Spain’s regions. The regional governments of Madrid and Barcelona appear to have underestimated the need to contract more contact tracers to keep tabs on cases.

Madrid, whose conservative leaders rarely shy away from a political scuffle with the nation’s left-wing government, has called for university volunteers to act as tracers and hired a private hospital to help do tracing.

Madrid’s regional health chief Enrique Ruiz told Spanish health news website ConSalud.es on Wednesday that the the capital has doubled its hospitalizations each week for the past month, reaching 4,600 last week.

“Our hospitals can handle the number of patients in the wards and critical care units, but that does not mean that we aren't closely watching the situation,” Ruiz said. Catalonia’s separatist-led administration, likewise, moved too slowly. Catalonia’s new public health director, Josep Argimon, said Tuesday that the situation is “stabilized” after his office appears to have improved the response by carrying out pool testing to control clusters.

Miquel Porta, a professor of epidemiology at Barcelona’s Hospital del Mar who also signed The Lancet letter, said “it is mind-blowing that politicians don’t take action” before the expected new wave returned.

“You need people in the field doing shoe leather work to search for contacts,” Porta said. “It boils down to very simple things, and some regional governments are not doing what they said they would.”

AP writer Nicole Winfield contributed to this report from Rome.

Virus exposes economic, racial divide in French health care

August 13, 2020

BONDY, France (AP) — Festering beneath France’s promise of guaranteed health care for all lie deep disparities across economic and racial lines — differences laid painfully bare by the COVID-19 crisis.

Two recent studies have documented these gaps, but government officials haven’t issued new proposals in response. However, as France records a new uptick in virus cases, a health advocacy group called Banlieues Santé — Suburbs Health — is trying to help, offering medical care and guidance in poor and migrant-heavy suburbs and neighborhoods.

After the pandemic broke out, they set up daily food and hygiene kit distribution points, and launched a phone application to coordinate NGOs distributing food — as well as translating public health information into the multiple languages spoken in the diverse communities.

Jacqueline Mendy, a Black mother of two, was among the fifty or so people who came to a tent that Banlieues Santé set up last week in her local park in the Paris suburb of Bondy, whose surrounding Seine-Saint-Denis region saw France’s highest mortality rate from the virus. She came with her son to ask some health questions, and learned about a free medical checkup for young women that she didn’t know about.

“I hadn’t thought of asking the question” about preventive health to her family doctor, Mendy told The Associated Press. Usually, she said, “when I go to my doctor, it’s because there’s an illness, or (the children) have a fever or something like that.”

Banlieues Santé attracted people to their tents with a Moroccan percussion and trumpet band that sang to curious onlookers. The nurses and social workers spoke French but also five other languages, and handed out masks, gel and other basics to families.

The COVID-19 crisis has re-focused attention on the health care challenges that have long plagued areas like Seine-Saint-Denis. Last month, a study from the national statistics agency revealed mortality rates rose disproportionately higher for Africa- and Asia-born people in France compared to the France-born populations during the first months of the pandemic. Another study by French economists showed France’s poorest cities in high-infection regions suffered more deaths than richer cities. The study pointed to “a higher share of workers frequently in contact with the public and a higher share of overcrowded housing."

These numbers don't surprise Abdelaali el Badaoui, the founder of Banlieues Santé, an organization of doctors, social workers and health officials that’s been working for 15 years in 300 French neighborhoods, mostly poor, immigrant and racialized. They deliver food and basic protective gear, translate public health guidance on their social media accounts and offer translators to help people navigate the French health care system.

El Badaoui hopes to “plug people back to health care routes." “The sickest are those the furthest out (from mainstream society), because of the cultural or linguistic barrier,” as well as those who can't afford supplemental insurance that makes it easier to access specialized treatment, El Badaoui told The AP.

The French health care system is meant to provide accessible medical treatment for all, but years of cost cuts left it stretched when the virus hit. The system’s bureaucratic demands and co-payments often scare away new immigrants or the very poor. And sometimes patients must travel far to reach a specialist, which not everyone can afford.

As the virus spread across France, the overall mortality rate in Seine-Saint-Denis increased 129% in March and April compared with the previous year — the highest rise in the country. Marie Pastor, a health official for Seine-Saint-Denis, outlined three main reasons: First, the department has a disproportionate rate of people with co-morbidities — for example, it has the highest rate of diabetes in mainland France. Second, a scarcity of general practitioners contributes to a “feeling of distance from institutions” and discourages people from seeking treatment, she said. Finally, the high concentration of essential workers among the region’s population made it harder for people to protect themselves and their families.

A study ordered by the Paris regional health agency found the same reasons — but didn't recommend specific measures to address the situation. Seine-Saint Denis has twice the unemployment rate of the national average, a third of its population is immigrant, and many more are descendants of immigrants. And in five years, it lost 8% of its general practitioners, despite a growing population.

Around France, minorities face other medical challenges. Last October, France’s top official for defending citizens’ rights reported that it is 6.5 times harder for people with “Muslim African names” to get psychiatry appointments than others. Despite calls by the government human rights watchdog to investigate discrimination in health care, there is little research on the topic because race-based research runs against France’s doctrine of colorblindness.

Talking about racism in French health care can prove difficult. Last week, a Twitter user published a list of Black health care professionals in France used by Black communities to find doctors less likely to discriminate against them. The very idea of such a list met heavy pushback. The Health Ministry expressed its “shock,” and the national doctors' council denied any discrimination among French doctors.

Angela Charlton in Paris contributed.

Belgian beach brawl fuels virus, political, climate tension

August 12, 2020

BRUSSELS (AP) — It started as a Saturday trip to Belgium's coast, a chance to escape a heat wave and coronavirus restrictions for a while. As the tide came in, the beach got crowded. Someone complained about the music being too loud. The mood quickly turned ugly.

Within minutes, dozens of people were battling it out on the sands. Some beach-goers threw bottles and umbrellas at police officers who intervened. By Sunday, a "gang of outsiders” was being blamed, and two coastal communities had banned day trippers from the city. Officers stood ready at railway stations and blocked traffic, turning away people who can't afford to live, work, or pay for hotel reservations in the area. Three teens, shirtless, still in their swimming gear, were charged with “armed rebellion.”

On Tuesday, Belgium's interior minister was trying to explain how it all happened, summoned to a tetchy hearing by the main populist party and a far-right nationalist faction. Civic groups called for action, urging people from poorer neighborhoods — among the hardest-hit by the virus — to find lawyers if they felt harassed by police “racial profiling,” or by zealous officials protecting wealthy holiday-makers at well-to-do beach communities.

Welcome to Belgium; a country that still has no full-time government 18 months after the last cabinet resigned; a country with one of the highest COVID-19 mortality rates in the world per population where restrictions are testing peoples’ patience; a country that just doesn’t get much really hot weather. It’s a simmering political soup on the verge of boiling over.

At the seaside resort of Knokke-Heist, where golf carts with license plates ply well-kept streets, there was ample room to stretch out on the beach early this week. Local authorities have banished day-trippers, who include many minorities, from Belgian cities or France from its 15-kilometer (10-mile) stretch of sands until the heat wave — which saw temperatures of up to 36 degrees Celsius (97 Fahrenheit) — is over.

Down a tree-lined street, at a home that he says dates from Napoleonic times, the mayor — Count Leopold Lippens — told The Associated Press that Knokke-Heist is an exclusive area prized for its many shops, restaurants and art galleries, and that only law-abiding people should bother to come.

“We are here in a country called Belgium, where the law is the law,” Lippens said. “We want the rules to be followed and if the rules are not followed, well, we will use our police force to have them followed.”

“People who don’t do that, they will be eradicated from this place,” he said. Asked whether he worried that banning ordinary people from spending the day might tarnish the image of his town, the mayor said: “People come because they like it, and they like it because it’s quality. We don’t want quantity, we want quality."

That view grates with Thierry Dupiereux, information officer with Belgium’s League of Families, a social organization aimed at helping families in need, and which lobbies for policy change. He says that the beach bans deprive people of “a safety-valve that helps them unwind.”

Almost 10,000 people have died from the coronavirus in Belgium — a country of just 11.5 million — and Dupiereux said the travel restrictions are “a social injustice” aimed at a part of society that has been hardest hit by the disease and the job losses that followed; people “who have little money, who can’t afford a week’s vacation at the beach or holidays abroad.”

The coast is just a 90-minute train ride from the capital Brussels. Other places where people without cars could get away and cool off are poorly served by public transport. Many youths boarded trains in Brussels on Tuesday, but the Knokke-Heist station was almost empty.

At first, the national rail service SNCB resisted calls to cut the number of beach-bound trains, but caved in as political pressure mounted and will now provide fewer this coming weekend. A number of lawmakers urged Interior Minister Pieter De Crem to rein in the SNCB, notably Bjorn Answeeuw, from the populist N-VA party.

Belgium’s last government collapsed when the N-VA pulled out. The party is too big to ignore and has been central in talks to form a new administration over the 14 months since the last election. During that time, the N-VA has routinely criticized the interim government installed to manage the COVID-19 crisis. Fears over migration have proved a vote winner for the party.

“Going freely to the coast is a right that we all have. Being beach day-trippers does not make us terrorists for a day,” De Crem said. For people like those involved in Saturday's beach riot in Blankenberge, De Crem suggested setting up a register — similar to ones used for soccer hooligans — and banning those on it from going to the coast.

Other parliamentarians expressed concern about the way police have acknowledged stopping people who merely look like the youths involved in the riot. “It wasn’t a night club bouncer who said this, it was a police officer,” said Socialist lawmaker Herve Rigot.

At the League of Families, Thierry Dupiereux said it’s difficult to work out who to believe these days, when the coronavirus, the lack of a full-time government and even a heat wave weigh on everyone’s minds and make for strange times.

“We’re in a political situation in Belgium today where a lot is at stake. We don’t always know who is acting on behalf of whom. There are lots of political games being played,” he said. In a surprising about-face a few hours after speaking to AP, and after the parliamentary hearing — which might underline the pressures involved — Mayor Lippens announced that day-trippers could return to Knokke-Heist as of Wednesday.

Mayo reported from Knokke-Heist, Belgium. Mark Carlson in Brussels contributed to this report.

Scientists uneasy as Russia approves 1st coronavirus vaccine

August 12, 2020

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia on Tuesday became the first country to approve a coronavirus vaccine, a move that was met with international skepticism and unease because the shots have only been studied in dozens of people.

President Vladimir Putin announced the Health Ministry's approval and said one of his two adult daughters already was inoculated. He said the vaccine underwent the necessary tests and was shown to provide lasting immunity to the coronavirus, although Russian authorities have offered no proof to back up claims of safety or effectiveness.

“I know it has proven efficient and forms a stable immunity,” Putin said. “We must be grateful to those who made that first step very important for our country and the entire world.” However, scientists in Russia and other countries sounded an alarm, saying that rushing to offer the vaccine before final-stage testing could backfire. What's called a Phase 3 trial — which involves tens of thousands of people and can take months — is the only way to prove if an experimental vaccine is safe and really works.

By comparison, vaccines entering final-stage testing in the U.S. require studies of 30,000 people each. Two vaccine candidates already have begun those huge studies, with three more set to get underway by fall.

“Fast-tracked approval will not make Russia the leader in the race, it will just expose consumers of the vaccine to unnecessary danger,” said Russia’s Association of Clinical Trials Organizations, in urging government officials to postpone approving the vaccine without completed advanced trials.

While Russian officials have said large-scale production of the vaccine wasn't scheduled until September, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said vaccination of doctors could start as early as this month. Officials say they will be closely monitored after the injections. Mass vaccination may begin as early as October.

“We expect tens of thousands of volunteers to be vaccinated within the next months,” Kirill Dmitriev, chief executive of the Russian Direct Investment Fund that bankrolled the vaccine, told reporters.

The vaccine developed by the Gamaleya Institute in Moscow with assistance from Russia's Defense Ministry uses a different virus -- the common cold-causing adenovirus -- that’s been modified to carry genes for the “spike” protein that coats the coronavirus, as a way to prime the body to recognize if a real COVID-19 infection comes along.

That’s a similar technology as vaccines being developed by China’s CanSino Biologics and Britain’s Oxford University and AstraZeneca — but unlike those companies, Russian scientists haven't published any scientific information about how the vaccine has performed in animal tests or in early-stage human studies.

Dmitriev said even as Russian doctors and teachers start getting vaccinated, advanced trials are set to start Wednesday that will involve “several thousand people” and span several countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines and possibly Brazil.

The Associated Press couldn't find documentation in the Russian Health Ministry's records indicating that permission to start the advanced trials was granted. The ministry has not responded to a request for comment.

Putin said one of his daughters has received two doses, and had minor side effects such as slight fever, and is now “feeling well and has a high number of antibodies.” It wasn't clear if she was one of the study volunteers.

The Health Ministry said in a statement Tuesday that the vaccine is expected to provide immunity from the coronavirus for up to two years, citing its experience with vaccines made with similar technology.

However, scientists around the world have been cautioning that even if vaccine candidates are proven to work, it will take even more time to tell how long the protection will last. “The collateral damage from release of any vaccine that was less than safe and effective would exacerbate our current problems insurmountably,” Imperial College London immunology professor Danny Altmann said in a statement Tuesday.

The World Health Organization has urged that all vaccine candidates go through full stages of testing before being rolled out, and said Tuesday it is in touch with the Russian scientists and “looks forward to reviewing” Russia’s study data. Experts have warned that vaccines that are not properly tested can cause harm in many ways — from harming health to creating a false sense of security or undermining trust in vaccinations.

Becoming the first country in the world to approve a vaccine was a matter of national prestige for the Kremlin as it tries to assert the image of Russia as a global power. Putin repeatedly praised Russia’s effective response to the outbreak in televised addresses to the nation, while some of Moscow’s top officials – including the country’s prime minister and Putin’s own spokesperson – became infected.

And the U.S., Britain and Canada last month accused Russia of using hackers to steal vaccine research from Western labs. Russia has denied involvement. Russia has so far registered 897,599 coronavirus cases, including 15,131 deaths.

The Gamaleya Institute’s director, Alexander Gintsburg, raised eyebrows in May when he said that he and other researchers tried the vaccine on themselves before the start of human studies. Those trials started June 17 with 76 volunteers. Half were injected with a vaccine in liquid form and the other half with a vaccine that came as soluble powder. Some in the first group were recruited from the military, which raised concerns that servicemen may have been pressured to participate. The test was declared completed earlier this month.

“It’s a too early stage to truly assess whether it’s going to be effective, whether it’s going to work or not,” said Dr. Michael Head, senior research fellow in global health at England's University of Southampton.

It's not Russia's first controversial vaccine. Putin has bragged that Russian scientists delivered an Ebola vaccine that “proved to be the most effective in the world” and “made a real contribution to fighting the Ebola fever in Africa.” However, there is little evidence either of the two Ebola vaccines approved in Russia was widely used in Africa. As of 2019, both of those vaccines were listed by the WHO as “candidate vaccines.”

AP medical writers Maria Cheng in London and Lauran Neergaard in Alexandria, Virginia, contributed to this report.

Global coronavirus cases top 20 million, doubling in 45 days

August 11, 2020

MITO, Japan (AP) — The number of coronavirus cases topped 20 million on Tuesday, more than half of them from the U.S., India and Brazil. Health officials believe the actual number is much higher than that tally kept by Johns Hopkins University, given testing limitations and the fact that as many as 40% of those who are infected have no symptoms.

It took six months or so to get to 10 million cases after the virus first appeared in central China late last year. It took just over six weeks for that number to double. An AP analysis of data through Aug. 9 showed the U.S., India and Brazil together accounted for nearly two-thirds of all reported infections since the world hit 15 million coronavirus cases on July 22.

The number of new daily cases has continued to rise in India, hitting a rolling seven-day average of 58,768. In the U.S., which has more than 5 million cases, the average has decreased since July 22nd, but remains high at 53,813 new cases a day.

In the 45 days it took reported infections to double to 20 million, the number of reported virus deaths climbed to 736,191 from 499,506, according to the Johns Hopkins count. That's 236,685 new deaths, an average of more than 5,200 a day.

About one-fifth of reported deaths, or more than 163,000, have been in the U.S., the highest in the world. Caseloads are still rising quickly in many other countries, including Indonesia and Japan. In Mexico, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, like Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and President Donald Trump, seldom wears a mask and has resisted calls for a strict lockdowns, saying Mexicans should be convinced to observe social distancing, not forced to do so by police or fines.

With nearly 500,000 cases and more than 50,300 deaths, Mexico has struggled with how to curb outbreaks given that just over half its people work off the books with no benefits or unemployment insurance.

A full lockdown would prove too costly for people with little savings and tenuous daily incomes, said Assistant Health Secretary Hugo López-Gatell, the president’s point man on the epidemic, noting “we do not want a solution that would, in social terms, be more costly than the disease itself.”

Mexico's relatively high death rate results partly from the country having one of the world's highest rates of obesity and diabetes. There has also been relatively little testing. Of all tests done, 47% are positive, suggesting that only seriously ill people are getting tests. That has hindered contract tracing.

India reported 53,601 new cases Tuesday as its count of total infections neared 2.3 million. Its reported case fatality rate, of 2%, is much lower than in the U.S. and Brazil. In Japan, where outbreaks have been widening as officials urge people to consider this year's summer holidays “special" and stay home, the positivity rate of tests in Tokyo, the worst hit region, has been climbing but remains at 7%.

The pandemic has waxed and waned in many regions, with the U.K. and Spain seeing new outbreaks after the worst of the early waves of cases paralyzed much of Europe. In Asia, Vietnam went from having reported no confirmed deaths and very few cases to battling fresh outbreaks that emerged in the seaside city of Danang. Australia was preparing to reopen travel with neighboring New Zealand, which has had no confirmed locally transmitted cases in more than 100 days, when fresh clusters of coronavirus cases popped up in Melbourne and the surrounding region.

That outbreak held steady Tuesday with 331 new cases and 19 more deaths in Victoria state, which includes Melbourne, raising hopes a strict, renewed lockdown in Australia's second-largest city was working. But authorities in Sydney were investigating a growing cluster of cases centered around a private Catholic school.

Meanwhile, outbreaks in mainland China and semi-autonomous Hong Kong declined, with the number of new community infections in China falling to 13, all in the northwestern region of Xinjiang. Hong Kong counted 69 new cases.

Similar to many other Asian countries, China requires testing and a two-week quarantine of all new arrivals and has barred most foreigners from entering the country. Border closures, masks, lockdowns and infection data are now the new way of life for much of the world, not the politically combustible factors they are in the U.S.

A review by the Kaiser Health News service and The Associated Press found that at least 49 state and local public health leaders have resigned, retired or been fired since April across 23 states. The list has grown by more than 20 people since the AP and KHN started keeping track in June.

Contributing to that attrition and burnout of badly needed experts have been attacks on public health experts and institutions from the highest levels, including President Donald Trump, who has sidelined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the pandemic.

“The overall tone toward public health in the U.S. is so hostile that it has kind of emboldened people to make these attacks,” said Dr. Tom Frieden, former CDC director.

Stevenson reported from Mexico City. Associated Press journalist Nicky Forster in New York contributed to this report, as did other AP journalists from around the world.

Virus-linked border moves raise fears on free travel in EU

August 10, 2020

BRUSSELS (AP) — As European countries struggle to manage spikes in coronavirus cases, concern is mounting about a “second wave” of uncoordinated border restrictions within Europe that threatens the free movement of goods and people — a foundation that the world’s biggest trading bloc is built on.

Despite repeated warnings about the dangers of unannounced checks, some countries have imposed new restrictions, or demanded that travelers quarantine, recalling the panic border closures after Europe’s first outbreak emerged in Italy in February, blocking traffic and medical equipment.

Beyond the economic impact of uncoordinated measures, experts fear that countries are becoming so used to lowering the gates at their frontiers as they see fit that the future of Europe’s ID-check free travel zone known as the Schengen area is in real peril.

In a letter to national governments, seen by The Associated Press, the European Commission warns that “while we must ensure that the EU is ready for possible resurgences of COVID-19 cases ... we should at the same time avoid a second wave of uncoordinated actions at the internal borders of the EU.”

“The re-establishment of ineffective restrictions and internal border controls must be avoided. Rather, the response should be to have targeted, proportionate and coordinated measures, informed by scientific evidence,” said the letter, sent to the 27 EU member countries and Britain.

Belgium — where EU headquarters are based — does not allow travel to some regions in Spain, notably Catalonia in the north, and also has bans on people coming from parts of France, Britain, Bulgaria, Croatia, Lithuania, Romania and Switzerland.

Scandinavian nations are notably quick to react to any rise in infection rates. Denmark’s foreign ministry now has Spain, Bulgaria, Luxembourg, Romania and Andorra on its so-called red list. Norway, which is not an EU member but is part of the Schengen area, has not hesitated either.

“Unfortunately, developments in several European countries are not moving in the right direction,” Norwegian Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soereide said. She says that people arriving from France, Monaco, Switzerland and the Czech Republic must now self-quarantine for 10 days.

The use of compulsory COVID-19 testing is also growing. Germany is testing people arriving from high-risk areas, including parts of Bulgaria and Romania, which are EU partners but not members of the Schengen area. Greece and Italy are taking similar steps for the two countries.

But it’s the constant tinkering with travel restrictions that is of greatest concern. EU governments can impose border restrictions for reasons of public security — including health concerns — as they see fit. However, the measures should be targeted and limited in time, and governments should warn of their plans.

Since 2015, the Schengen rules have been routinely flouted, mostly due to distrust among European countries who doubted that their partners would do the right thing. First some countries relied on closures to help cope with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants, many fleeing conflict in Syria or Iraq, seeking better lives in northern Europe. Some of those restrictions are still in place.

The big challenge to Schengen these days is the coronavirus pandemic. “Scenes of backed-up borders and checkpoints would have been unthinkable just five years ago. Yet today, the unilateral reintroduction of border checks and border closures has become an accepted part of member states’ toolkits to respond to cross-border emergencies,” according to the Migration Policy Institute.

A side-effect of the virus border restrictions — which might be welcomed by countries such as Austria, Denmark, Hungary or Poland that are still worried about migrant arrivals — is that the number of people applying for asylum also plummeted.

The danger, the institute said, is that “the instinct to return to national borders at times of crisis may only grow stronger, particularly as second or third waves of the virus necessitate the reintroduction of some level of travel restrictions.”

Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen contributed to this report.

Turkey vows to press ahead with energy search amid tensions

August 11, 2020

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey vowed Tuesday to press ahead with searching for oil and gas in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, saying it plans to issue new exploration licenses for the area despite an escalating dispute with Greece over drilling rights.

Greece's foreign minister, meanwhile, called for an emergency meeting of the European Union's Foreign Affairs Council “on the subject of the growing Turkish provocation and delinquency.” Tension has increased between NATO allies Greece and Turkey, both of which have warships shadowing a Turkish research vessel that was sent to carry out seismic research for energy resources in the eastern Mediterranean in an area Greece says is on its continental shelf.

Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias called on Turkey “to immediately withdraw from the Greek continental shelf,” saying that “we make clear that Greece will defend its sovereignty and its sovereign rights.”

Dendias said he had called for the EU's foreign ministers to meet “at a time when there is a clear Turkish threat to peace and security in the eastern Mediterranean, Greece and Cyprus.” Earlier Tuesday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey planned to conduct search operations “on the western edges” of Turkey’s continental shelf. He said the work would be done on behalf of both Turkey and Turks in ethnically divided Cyprus, which also has objected to Ankara's exploration activities.

“We are fully determined to continue our seismic research and drilling efforts,” Cavusoglu said during a joint news conference with his visiting Azerbaijani counterpart. “We will defend to the end the rights of Turkey and of Turkish Cypriots in the Eastern Mediterranean and in Cyprus, and we will make no concessions.”

The Turkish government announced on Monday that its research vessel Oruc Reis and two support vessels would be operating in the Mediterranean Sea between Cyprus and Greece until Aug. 23. The vessel arrived in the area Monday morning, escorted by Turkish warships.

Greece slammed the decision as an illegal act that infringed on its sovereign rights, saying the Turkish research vessel was inside an area covered by the Greek continental shelf. Greek warships were in the area monitoring the Oruc Reis, and the military was on alert, officials said.

In Brussels, European Commission spokesman Peter Stano said member states would consult about the Greek request for an extraordinary meeting of the bloc's foreign ministers. “We agree that the situation in the eastern Mediterranean is extremely worrying and needs to be solved in dialogue and not in a series and sequence of steps that are increasing the escalation and the tension,” Stano said.

Omer Celik, the spokesman for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling party, criticized Athens for calling on the EU. “As usual, Greece has called the European Union to a meeting to support its unfair, unlawful and aggressive policies," Celik said on Twitter. "The European Union should not allow Greece to turn the whole of Europe into a ‘Greek theater,’” he said on Twitter.

Greece and Turkey have traditionally had testy relations and have been at odds for decades over a wide variety of issues. The two have come to the brink of war three times since the mid-1970s, including once over drilling exploration rights in the Aegean Sea that separates the two countries. Recent discoveries of natural gas and drilling plans across the east Mediterranean have led to renewed tension.

Cavusoglu said Turkey last month had agreed to halt its search efforts in the region “as a gesture” following the intercession of the EU and Germany but that Greece did not respond “in a positive way.”

“No one can accuse Turkey of not displaying goodwill, but on the opposite side, there is a country with bad intentions. If they are to blame anyone, they must blame Greece,” Cavusoglu said. Ankara was angered by a deal Greece signed with Egypt on Thursday delineating their bilateral maritime boundaries and exclusive economic zones for rights to the exploitation of resources.

Last year, Turkey signed a similar deal with the U.N.-backed Libyan government in Tripoli, sparking outrage in Greece, Egypt and Cyprus, which said the agreement infringed on their economic rights in the Mediterranean. The EU said the deal was a violation of international law that threatened regional stability.

At the heart of the issue is how a country’s continental shelf is calculated and whether islands should be included in the calculation. Turkey argues they should not, a position that Greece says violates international law.

Becatoros reported from Athens, Greece.